Legionary (8 page)

‘Still think you’re ready for this, lad?’ Brutus grunted.

In a final echo of winter, a heavy snow had settled over the land of Bosporus. The thirty eight men of the XI Claudia and the handful of Gothic prisoners plugged on through the pillowy drifts, zigzagging around swamp and marshland on one side and hills on the other to inch further east across the peninsula neck. The rescued prisoner Proteus lay limp on a stretcher, his legs crippled and his skin pale through loss of blood — the boy had only muttered in a fever since they rescued him from the fort.

They rounded the base of a hill and a pure white plain yawned out before them. Gallus marched up front alongside Felix; the pair gritted their teeth to prevent chattering in the icy headwind that met them from the plain, the full wrath of the cold raking through armour and clothing.

‘What d’you think Proteus meant by it…
run?
’ Felix mused.

‘Something has gotten into these Goths — that’s for sure. These men fought like cornered wolves,’ Gallus nodded back to the train of prisoners, then shook his head and lowered his voice. ‘The lad’s not likely to make it, you know,’ he whispered.

Felix nodded in resignation. ‘If we can get to pitch camp somewhere sheltered tonight, he may come round given heat, food and water. At least, long enough to tell us more.’

The wind whipped the falling snow into a stinging blizzard, and Gallus pulled his woollen cloak tighter. ‘It’s top priority for all of us, Felix. We’re dying out in this freezing Hades.’

The second fort was supposed to be somewhere in this region, but the white plain rolled out unbroken.

‘More bloody snow…’ The optio halted in his tracks, slapping an arm across Gallus’ chest.

The crisp and unblemished snow ended abruptly; a dark smear of activity stained the plain to the north. The second fort took on an immediate insignificance in comparison with the thousands of people swarming around it. Smoke scudded across the sky from the east.

‘Halt!’ Gallus barked, raising a hand. He waved the column in to tuck into the hillside. ‘We’ve got company, lots of company,’ he spoke steadily. ‘Avitus, Zosimus, get the prisoners tucked in to the side. Keep watch in either direction. Felix, you’re with me,’ he ordered, beckoning his optio. The pair jogged up to a lip of snowdrift, dropping to their stomachs just before the ridge. Gallus’ mouth dried as he took in the scene of devastation on the plain ahead.

A ragged Gothic exodus swarmed around the broken remains of the fort, led by an army numbering thousands of horsemen and infantry, followed by a train of women, children and oxen tripling the overall number. To the east, the land was a charred checkerboard of burnt farmland stretching off into the horizon. Even the driving snow could not disguise the broken huts and tell-tale humps of mass graves pitting and scarring the land in between.

‘These people…they’re being
driven
from their land,’ Felix gasped. As the wind howled around them, a faint sobbing could be heard along with the drumming of hooves. ‘What is it — plague, pestilence maybe?’

‘There’s more to it than that, Felix; those graves are warrior graves,’ Gallus pointed to the humps, pricked with swords, hundreds of them. ‘They’ve been beaten in battle…and beaten badly. Now they’ve adopted a scorched earth policy on their own farms — desperate measures.’

‘Intelligence didn’t mention warring Goths tribes here?’ Felix quizzed.

‘No, it is, or
was
a unified kingdom according to…’ a weary look wrinkled his features, ‘…our
intelligence
. I think they were faced with something they knew they couldn’t defeat. We need to talk to our Gothic prisoners.’

‘They haven’t spoken a word, sir. They’ll die first — stubborn bastards, worse than the lot over the Danubius.’

‘They
will
talk…’ Gallus was cut off by the gasp of one of the crouched legionaries behind him. Turning, he caught the briefest glimpse of a figure high on the hillside, turning his blood colder than the chill air. Like a cobra, the figure ducked back and disappeared.

‘Felix, was that…’

The optio’s face was grave. ‘Yes, sir, the riders from the forest…’

Snow whipped across the huddle of legionaries, lips and noses blue as they scoured the verge above; the face that had been there only moments before now seeming like a trick of the light as they scanned the brilliant white and the foggy grey of the snowstorm.

Zosimus scaled the shear face up to the verge — despite his enormous weight and the bitter ice that clung to the rock face he moved like a spider. Gallus and Avitus tumbled up the winding path to intercept the stranger from the other side. The snow took on a fury like never before, and they struggled to see even paces ahead.

In a brief moment of respite as the wind changed, the tip of the hill was clear, and Gallus blinked as he saw the form of Zosimus hanging by his fingertips from the verge — as the dark figure on the hilltop hared in.

‘Zosimus,’ Gallus roared. His words swallowed by the storm winds as the figure swiped a blade at the defenceless legionary. A dull roar echoed over the howling blizzard as it kicked into full gear again, and Gallus closed his eyes as he saw the big Thracian fall limply to the rocks below. Another brother fallen.

‘Sir, we’ve got him cornered,’ Avitus cried out.

Gallus shook the confusion from his head. He nodded, drew his sword, and pointed his fingers in a V. He stalked out to the left of the dark figure, and Avitus took the right.

‘Drop your weapons, you’re surrounded!’ The figure spun round in a half-crouch, coiled like a spring, sword in hand. Gallus stalked forward, his spatha raised and trained on the man. The stranger’s stony expression was gradually unveiled in the murky light. Curtained by long black hair, he bore the distinctive features of the riders from the forest: skin both dark and buttery, face flat and almost square, with almond eyes, a small, squat, distinctly un-Roman nose and a thread-like moustache hanging around his lips, upon which the driving snow began to settle. But it was the angry triple welt of scars on each cheek that stilled the breath in Gallus’ lungs.

A cluster of legionaries, led by Felix, shuffled up around them.

‘Felix? The prisoners?’ Gallus howled over the blizzard.

‘Sir, we saw Zosimus fall!’ Felix gestured to the foot of the hill, his face grim. ‘There are fifteen guarding the prisoners, but we thought you might need some extra muscle?’

‘There’s only one of them, Felix, but I don’t see his horse — there must be more of them around. Stay alert.’ Gallus then turned to the stranger. ‘Drop your weapon, or you’ll be dead before your next breath,’ he barked.

The man’s glance darted at the men encircling him, his eyes growing and his toothy grimace widening. He backed off pace by pace until his heel kicked snow from the verge onto the rocks below. With a grunt the stranger buckled, dropped to his knees and cursed in a jagged foreign tongue.

Gallus stepped over to him, lifting his sword to his throat. ‘Who are you?’

The stranger looked up to his captor, rage welling in his eyes.

‘I have failed, honour is lost!’ He rasped in a broken Greek.

‘Who are you, and who are your people?’ Gallus pressed, forcing his sword point to mark a white crease against the man’s skin.

‘I am the first of the storm; my kin will destroy your people like a plague.
Tengri
the sky god watches from above, and he wills your end. You will be swept away like kindling,’ he spat.

‘Who is your leader and where are your people?’ Gallus pressed on. ‘I warn you, I want answers, not threats!’

At this, the stranger’s eyes sparkled, and his weak rasping grew into a bellowing laugh as the blizzard picked up fiercely. Gallus held steady as a chill ran through him. Suddenly, the laughter stopped and the stranger bore a bold grimace.

‘Your people will destroy themselves.
Already
they plot their own destruction yet they don’t even see it…and…they want us to help!’

Gallus’ brow furrowed. ‘Enough of this game playing, you will talk! If you don’t want…’ Gallus recoiled as, fast as a striking cobra, the stranger whipped a dagger from his boot and thrust it into his own jugular. A torrent of dark blood spouted from the wound, and the life drained from his body in seconds. The legionaries stood in silence as his body toppled forward into the scarlet snow. Then a chorus of screams rang out from below. The legionaries scrambled to the edge of the hilltop. Gallus punched a fist into his palm; the Gothic prisoners lay in a splatter of blood along with the fifteen legionaries left to guard them and the crippled soldier, Proteus. Arrows still quivered in their chests and necks. A clutch of the mysterious horsemen sped away, swords stained red.

‘Felix, take ten down there and check for survivors.’ His optio’s face was grim. Clearly, all below were dead. ‘And proceed with caution.’

Gallus looked around as his men muttered in fear. Before it could swell into panic, he swallowed his rage. ‘We’re in the middle of something big here. It was and still is our prerogative to get back to friendly territory to report this.’ He looked to the north; the Gothic horde was moving off, thankfully oblivious to the goings-on above them. He then looked to the east.

‘We bury our men first, and then we move on to the eastern coast without delay. A small detachment can scout the last fort on the way. The boys we left behind on the shore will be bringing the
Aquila
round to the eastern neck of the peninsula tomorrow night to the agreed rendezvous point. Then we can go home!’ The legionaries shivered, nodding in approval.

Just then Felix padded up to the hilltop. ‘Sir, Zosimus, he’s alive! He just let himself fall to dodge the blade. He’s cracked some ribs and his shoulder, but he’ll mend!’ The legionaries let out a roar of approval.

‘Let’s get the fat bastard onto a stretcher then; I’ll take the first shift on carrying him. To the coast and the
Aquila!
Who’s with me?’ The legionaries broke the driving blizzard with a chorus of support.

Gallus held his steady gaze until the last of his men had turned away and only then let his face fall. The coast and the
Aquila
were so very far from here.

Father stood before him, but not the father he remembered from the earlier times he had been here; he looked different. This time he was standing in the eye of a sandstorm, stock still and wearing only tattered robes, his hair was unkempt and white and he held out one hand while the desert raged around him. Pavo had felt himself being drawn closer and closer still, feeling the sand grains whip against his skin and the wind roar in his ears. The noise grew deafening until he came close enough to make out Father’s features. Then he recoiled; there was something wrong with his eyes, they were shaded, dark. Then Father looked up, directly at him, his dark and hollow sockets staring. Pavo woke, sat bolt upright in his cot and gasped for breath while the legion slept around him in the silent barracks.

He shivered at the still vivid image — the dream had haunted his sleep for years. Father had always been calling him, but each time, he seemed darker, angrier. He frowned, running his fingers across his bristled scalp then feeling for the bronze phalera on the end of the leather thong around his neck.

Taking a deep breath, he glanced around the barracks to ground himself. They had been at the fort for just a fortnight, but the bitterness of life under a slave master in Constantinople seemed an age ago, long replaced by the toil under a different master in the form of Centurion Brutus. Cruel as Brutus was, it was his job. But it was the altogether more sinister threat from Spurius and his club-fisted friend Festus who seemed more direct replacements for Fronto, he mused, rubbing the dark-blue bruises the pair had left on his ribs the previous day.The other recruits would have been ambivalent about their agenda, he was sure, had it not been for Spurius’ muscle, but they too had sided with the angry young Greek when push came to shove. All except Sura, Pavo mused as the Thracian snored, sleeping soundly as usual despite the pummellings he had taken from Festus.
For what,
Pavo wondered, thinking back to their oath outside the fort on that first day they met,
for a half-cocked pact made in jest when he barely knew me?

Sunlight crept under the doorway. Pavo forced deep, slow breaths into his lungs as the orangey tendrils slithered towards his bunk. A modicum of calm was descending on him when a powerful, ripping fart echoed around the barracks, followed by the pained coughing of the poor sod who had taken the brunt of its aroma. No amount of deep breathing would make today any easier; a quick march was on the agenda; twenty miles of treacherous terrain — bog, forest and hills — carrying the full burden of legionary armour, rations and camping gear. All that on a stomach of hardtack biscuits and cheese — the meagre and all too familiar portions rationed to the recruits not out of necessity but apparently ‘all part of the training’.

He again glanced at Sura; the two would have to spur each other on through today’s punishment and — he glowered over at the snoring Spurius — watch each other’s backs. His eyes hung on the thug momentarily, until the crunch of the morning watch on the flagstones outside startled him.

The
buccinas
howled out the morning wakeup call and at once, the barracks stirred with a chorus of grumbling and cursing. Pavo tensed his jaw as the silence ebbed away and the reality of the day ahead took a grip on him. He slid from his bunk, greeted by a confused moan from Sura.

‘What’re you doing out of your pit?’

‘Couldn’t wait to break my back and fling myself through mud,’ Pavo shot back with a sardonic grin, tightening his bootstraps then slipping into the less filthy of the two coarse standard issue tunics. Casting nervous glances around the barracks, he gathered up the weighty equipment they had been assigned yesterday — certainly not the pristine armour his father had enjoyed. The rusting mail vest alone strained his wiry limbs and dug into his shoulders, and he had yet to add on the burden of the battered and punctured intercisa helmet, the solid mass of an oval shield — the paint-flecked surface scratched and scarred beyond recognition, and his wooden training sword. He winced at the thought of adding the rest of the standard campaign kit to that lot: a snub pickaxe and a rusting sickle, a coil of rope, an earth-shifting basket — all bulk that would chafe at his skin throughout the march. Even the rations were bulky and heavy, with Brutus insisting on a standard twenty-day ration pack to ‘give ‘em a feel for the pain of a real march.’ The leather backpack was stuffed with hardtack biscuits, bread, salted mutton, water and sour wine.